


we are gone (forget me, to the best of your ability)

by Remigius



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M, I had feelings about Sophia I needed to address
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29602698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remigius/pseuds/Remigius
Summary: She watches him leave, pockets full of buttons of a man that is long since dead and bitterly regrets having ever listened to her aunt and uncle.
Relationships: Sophia Cracroft/Francis Crozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	we are gone (forget me, to the best of your ability)

She has no right to mourn, she tells herself as she listens to her aunt beg the admiralty to send men to find her uncle.

She has no right to mourn, she tells herself when months upon months have passed with no sign of word from her uncle or Francis. She’d rejected him twice. She’d made herself very clear, her uncle even more so. And yet.

She wonders how two ships could just vanish. No trace, no note. Nothing. Days pass into weeks pass into months.

“They’re fine out there, of course.” Her aunt’s teacup rattles against her saucer, even as her aunt stares her down as if begging her to speak sense into her. She doesn’t. “They’ve been on expeditions before, and for longer than this.”

“Of course.” She smiles, clenching her own teacup so hard that she fears it will shatter into pieces in her hands. Her heart with it.

Months turn to years; her sympathy curdles to apathy. Her aunt is beside herself with worry, despite keeping a strong front before those she begs to send money for ships to try and find the men left out there in the freezing cold. So far away that she can’t even begin to imagine it. She wonders if Francis thinks about her at all. If they’ve made it far into the Arctic and just never wrote. If she’ll ever see his face again.

It does not matter, she reminds herself as she stares before the audience in front of them, Francis is not her husband. She cannot mourn a man that she never loved. She cannot beg an audience for anything but her uncle back. She cannot ask for anything having to do with Francis at all.

Captain Crozier is not well liked but he has talent, she knows. He’s out there somewhere in the world. He does not need her pity.

She steps out of her slippers into the ice cold of the snow, near jerking her bare feet away from the frigid temperatures. She shivers without her shawl, without any protection from the sharp biting winds save for the dress around her.

Yet it’s the most she’s felt in close to two years, now. It’s more than she expected to feel ever again. She lasts near fourty-five minutes, numb and shaking before it becomes so unbearable that she wants to scream. She wonders what they’ve endured out there, the Terror and Erebus. If they too wanted to scream at the endless cold.

“Francis.” She murmurs to herself, as tears freeze on her cheeks halfway down her face.

She does not mourn a man she never married.

Three years after the disappearance of the ships, men appear at their door. Men her uncle knew, men that Francis knew. She knows immediately what they will say before they ever utter a word. She knew by the awkwardness, the pretense of bringing her aunt flowers. Whispered apologies they may not even mean, for a man they never truly even liked.

Her aunt holds back her trembling well, her voice steady with years of practice of feigning emotion.

“And what of Crozier?” She finally asks, her voice cracking slightly. She can’t remember the last time that she spoke, even felt like she wanted to.

He smiles uncertainly, glancing at her aunt. She does not care. She can’t live without answers for a man who gave everything to sail away on a ship that was never seen again.

“All of the men of the Terror and Erebus are dead. I’m sorry, Lady Cracroft. I bear no good news.” He opens his palms, a handful of gold buttons with insignia in within it. “This is all we have found. All that is left of Captain Crozier. He was the last surviving man and perished with the tribe in the Arctic.”

“Of course, _he_ survived the longest.” Her aunt says voice brittle with anger. “He would do anything to live to one more drink.”

She thinks about his hands, politely at her waist. His thumb tracing over her back, softly. So softly. Steady. It does not matter. She will not think of a man that is not her husband. “That’s a shame,” she says, closing his hand back over the buttons, “there were many good men on those ships.” She will not accept the last pieces of a man she didn’t love and does not mourn. He puts them in his pocket.

“Indeed.” He agrees, “If there is nothing else…?”

She watches him leave, pockets full of buttons of a man that is long since dead and bitterly regrets having ever listened to her aunt and uncle.


End file.
